Tactical operators and emergency responders rely relatively heavily on maps not only for planning operations, but for their own situational awareness and to coordinate their actions with others. For tactical operators and emergency responders, maps may be particularly important when operating in structural terrain. Structural terrain, for example, may not only include buildings—residential, commercial, civic, etc., but may also include sewer systems, subways, parking garages, bridges, dams, power plants and substations, and other manmade structures within which people can move and act, and within which operators and emergency responders operate.
Operation in this structural terrain may be particularly challenging as standard geographic maps, for example, may provide relatively basic geographic information, such as, roadways and monuments. However, standard geographical maps may be inadequate in urban settings with increased amounts of structural terrain. Additionally, the useful and up-to-date maps may be unavailable for certain structures. Moreover, since a relatively large amount of people are concentrated in areas of increased structural terrain, these areas of structural terrain are typically where emergency services are most desired.
Several systems address the shortcomings of standard geographic maps by augmenting reality with certain situational data. U.S. Pat. No. 5,815,411 to Ellenby et al. is directed to an electro-optic vision system which exploits position and attitude. More particularly, Ellenby et al. discloses an augmented reality system that includes a 1) camera to collect optical information about a real scene and present that information as an electronic signal to; a 2) computer processor; a 3) device to measure the position of the camera; and a 4) device to measure the attitude of the camera (direction of the optical axis), thus uniquely identifying the scene being viewed, and thus identifying a location in; a 5) data base where information associated with various scenes is stored, the computer processor combines the data from the camera and the data base and perfects a single image to be presented at; a 6) display whose image is continuously aligned to the real scene as it is viewed by the user.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2002/0196202 to Bastian et al. is directed to a method for displaying emergency first responder command, control, and safety information using augmented reality. More particularly, Bastian et al. discloses displaying a layout of incident space on a display in the form of a geometric model. The geometric model may be a 3D model, for example, constructed using stereoscopic images or entered into a computer a priori.